In the domain of literature, authors leverage a variety of perspective techniques to better convey a narrative. For example, first-person perspective relates to a view of the world from the perspective of a single character. Thus, first-person perspective allows the reader to experience events through the perceptions of another by proxy. First-person devices are often associated with biographies and are characterized by pronouns such as “I” or “we.” Third-person perspective is the most common type of perspective device and is often characterized by omniscient perspectives with each character referred to as a distinct entity from the point-of-view of the reader, often exemplified by pronouns “he” or “she.” By far, the rarest perspective type is that of second-person, wherein events or behaviors of another are attributed to the reader. Second-person literature is most commonly utilized in terms of choose-your-own-adventure books or how-to books, and is typified by narratives that discuss “you,” rather than “I,” “we,”, “he,” or “she.”
As with literature, perspective devices can be important to other domains as well. For example, perspective devices can be thoughtfully applied to immersive or virtual environments yet, conventionally, this is not the case. Rather, consider avatars of today's immersive or virtual environments. Avatars in these cases are generally constructed to represent a friend or assistant who can interact with the user or an environment of the user as a distinct entity vis-à-vis the perspective of that user. Thus, today's avatars are arbitrarily discussed or implemented as distinct third-person entities, and once implemented in this perspective type, as with literature, it becomes erroneous or unnatural to switch to another perspective type. Thus today's immersive or virtual environments do not adequately leverage other types of perspective.